Manchester Guitar Tech
I was asked to refinish the top of this 1981 Gibson Les Paul Deluxe which was originally sunburst but had been “goldtopped” using what looked like car spray. The colour was completely wrong and bizarrely, mini-humbuckers and P-90 pickups (which are the same size of course) would not fit in the cavities! For this job …
Here’s another nasty break, this time a longitudinal split in a Les Paul neck, caused by a fall. All that was required was to glue and clamp both sides before refinishing the back of the neck using my nitrocellulose lacquers.
Another week, another headstock repair! This one was trickier than most as instead of a nice clean break, the wood had splintered which meant that putting it back again too some care. This guitar had also suffered some collateral damage to the front and back of the body when it was knocked off the stand. …
When doing a general setup and fettle of this 70s Les Paul copy, I noticed that a couple of the inlays were standing proud of the fretboard. This is a common problem with these old guitars – the celluloid shrinks, warps and comes unstuck. You can see that they were never a good fit and …
A regular customer of mine recently bought a 2006 Les Paul and brought it to me for a setup. As soon as I straightened the neck, which had been somewhat bowed, I realised that the 1st string was buzzing against the first fret as the nut had been cut too low. I suspect that the relief …
Here’s a lefty Epiphone Les Paul that I upgraded the other day. The list of upgrades is: Tusq nut fret dress rewire setup Tusq nut The nut on the guitar was a cheap hollow plastic replacement that had poorly cut string slots causing tuning problems. A new Tusq nut sorted that out. Rewire The existing …
Here’s another Gibson Les Paul headstock repair, the second within the space of two days! The owner of this guitar had left it in his rehearsal room and come back to find it broken. It was pretty clear from the break and other damage on the body that someone had taken the guitar out of its …
I recently performed a full upgrade on a Vintage Lemon Drop guitar. These guitars are great value for money but obviously at such a low price, some components are going to be less than top quality. The full list of changes is: bone nut Sperzel tuners Tonepros nickel bridge and tailpiece Tonerider Alnico IV pickups …
I built this Les Paul Junior copy from scratch and finished in in Vintage White nitrocellulose lacquer. The body is one piece of mahogany, with a maple neck.
This Les Paul came to me badly refinished in polyurethane varnish. I completely stripped it (apart from the area around the serial number) and refinished it in nitrocellulose lacquer, using the same bronze powder pigments that would have been used originally.